The Moon Pool (32 page)

“Mrs. Mitchell, do you remember I told you I stayed with relatives when I came back from college?” Kristine said. “I stayed with the Weyants. My aunt and uncle and cousins. Elizabeth and I shared a room.”

“She always made me feel better, whenever my parents—”

“Wait,” Colleen broke in. “
Chief
Weyant? Your dad's the police chief?”

Elizabeth nodded. “He'd go crazy if he knew I was pregnant...”

“You don't have to be,” Kristine said tersely. “Mrs. Mitchell, I'm sorry, it's not my place, but I've been trying to tell Elizabeth that she has options. I can't keep covering up for her. I can't keep lying.”

“It was only supposed to be until I graduated,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “I'll be eighteen. I'll be an adult. Paul and I were going to get a place. We were going to get married. He proposed.”

“Oh, God.” Colleen put her hands to her face, unable to process everything she was hearing. Her son had not only found a girlfriend, his first; he'd gotten her pregnant and fast-forwarded to marriage. “You're underage. If anyone had found out—”

“Once I'm eighteen they can't prosecute,” Elizabeth said hurriedly. “I went online. I mean they could but they won't, not if we get married. Oh, Mrs. Mitchell, I miss him so much, I can't even believe how much.”

“Do you—do you have any idea where he and Taylor are? What happened to them?”

For a moment Elizabeth said nothing, her hand twisting the tiny cross she wore on a gold chain. Then she shook her head, not meeting Colleen's eyes.

“This baby is everything to me,” she said, pressing her hands to her flat stomach. “Mrs. Mitchell, I miss Paul so much. I can't breathe sometimes, thinking about him, and then I think he's with me all the time, in this tiny baby we made, and... and that way I can keep going through each day, even though it feels like I'm in a daze.”

“
Elizabeth
,” Kristine said impatiently. “That's not what she asked you. Is there anything you've thought of? That would help Mrs. Mitchell and Taylor's mom? Anything you remembered from the last time you saw him? This is serious. Come
on.
”

Elizabeth turned to her cousin. “I've gone over and over it, every minute we were together after he got back from Christmas. He came to see me the first night he got back. I told my parents I was at a movie with friends and since it was a Friday they were okay with that. I told him I was pregnant before he left, and he... the night he came back he asked me to marry him.” She blushed and tugged at one of the thin chains around her neck.

Something glinted at the end of the chain. When Colleen realized what it was, she gasped. “Oh, my God. That's... that's my mother's ring.”

Elizabeth undid the clasp and let the ring fall into her palm. The diamond glittered between the two tiny sapphires in the antique platinum setting. She held it out to Colleen.

“I don't feel right keeping it now, Mrs. Mitchell. I couldn't let my parents see it, and I didn't know where to keep it safe, but Paul said he wanted me to have it. He said as soon as I turned eighteen I'd put it on and we'd drive to see you and... and... I've been keeping it in a little box in my dresser but I'm worried sick my mom will find it. If you would keep it safe for me... if Paul...”

Trembling, she put the ring in Colleen's hand.

Colleen folded her fingers over the ring, the metal warm from Elizabeth's skin. Her mind raced, thinking back to Paul's last visit home. He'd said he needed his passport to take back with him, for employment verification. Colleen had thought it was strange that he was being asked for it now, after being on the job for several months, but he said it was because they'd been so backed up. He offered to pick up dinner, since her favorite Thai restaurant was next to the bank, and she'd been so glad to see this change in her son: taking responsibility, getting things done, offering to help.

And of course she hadn't been back to the safety-deposit box... and even if she had, would she have looked in the velvet box to make sure her mother's ring was still there?

“I was so afraid of what my dad would do if he found out.”

“Elizabeth,” Kristine said, “your dad loves you. Both your parents do.”

“You don't
know.
” Elizabeth's voice was agonized. “You have no idea what they get like.”

“I lived with you guys for most of a year,” Kristine said, exasperated. “They're strict, but they're not mean.”

Elizabeth was shaking her head. “They have
everyone
fooled. Oh, my God, Daddy practically killed me when he found out I started dating.”

“That is
not
true.”

“He hardly ever lets me out of his sight. That's why we're so careful. Paul parks a block away and goes through the parking lot out back and I let him in through the slider door.”

There was a knock at the door. Kristine jumped up and went to answer it.

“You must be Kristine,” Colleen heard Shay say. “I'm so sorry to barge in like this, but is Colleen still here? Oh, you are, thank God.”

She pushed past Kristine into the room. “Hi. I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I just... Colleen, it was a fatality. One of the workers fell off the rig. He's dead.”

“
IT
COULD
HAVE
been an accident,” Colleen said.

“Don't you think that's a hell of a coincidence?”

“I don't know. I just don't know. Right now everything feels like it's all twisted up. Like I don't know what caused what. Where it started and where it ends.
God.
”

They were back in their warm hotel room, drinking room service tea, the sky outside going steely as thick, low clouds moved in and obliterated the sun.

“Okay, look.” Shay was sprawled on the love seat, tapping on her iPad. “We know a lot that we didn't know a few days ago. And we're starting to get pulled in different directions. We need to separate what we know from what we're just guessing at. Maybe then we'll be able to figure out what we're not seeing here.”

Colleen went to the desk and came back with the notepad and pens with the hotel's logo. “I have to do this on paper,” she said. “I can't think about it unless I can see it all laid out.” She pulled a chair close to the coffee table and tore a piece of paper off the pad.

“Okay. What we know. There were safety violations that the boys knew about.” She wrote
Hunter-Cole safety
on the paper.

Shay set her iPad down and sat up facing Colleen. “Is it okay if I write on these too?”

“Yes, that's the point.” Colleen handed her a pen.

Shay tore off two more sheets. She labeled one of them
fact
and marked the other with a question mark and set them at opposite ends of the coffee table. She pushed the
Hunter-Cole safety
paper to the fact side. “We know that a worker is dead after an accident today. And that there have been a lot of other accidents on Hunter-Cole rigs. We also know that the foreman, or whatever he was, was willing to assault me to keep us off the rig.” She wrote
fatal accident
and
cover-up
and set it by the question mark.

They were quiet for a moment. “So now...” Shay said slowly, “let's say Weyant found out about Paul. If what Elizabeth says is true, that he's crazy, what if he... did something to Paul?”

“You can say it,” Colleen said hoarsely. “If we're going to do this, we have to look at all the possibilities. If he hurt him, if he went after Paul...”

“And somehow Taylor got in the way, or something. And he goes nuts and kills them. So then he's responsible for both of them.”

“Just to keep Paul away from his daughter? It just seems...”

“We're brainstorming, Col. Come on. So he... got rid of the boys. Now we're here stirring things up. Of course he's not going to do anything to help us.”

Shay grabbed another piece of paper and wrote
Elizabeth/-pregnant
and added it to the question-mark pile.

“That should go in facts,” Colleen said.

“No. We don't have any proof. Yesterday you thought it was the other girl. Maybe both of them are lying.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don't know. But it's not a fact. Not until I see her pee on the stick, anyway. And really...” She wrote
Paul's girlfriend
on the paper too.

Colleen slowly nodded. She took the paper back and wrote
abusive/-protective father
underneath. “So really, we don't know anything about her.”

“Except the ring.”

Colleen wrote
Mom's ring
on a fresh sheet and slapped it down on the fact pile.

“Now, the Indian angle.” On another piece of paper she wrote
Reservation, mineral rights/lease.

“
This is really just part of this one,” Colleen said, tapping the paper marked
Hunter-Cole.
“Hunter-Cole is only at risk of losing their rights if their safety record is exposed. We haven't come up with any proof that the boys had anything to do with the reservation.”

“Okay, one more,” Shay said. “If we're thinking outside the box. Kristine wanted you to come exactly at twelve twenty—”

“Because of Elizabeth's schedule—that way she'd be sure Elizabeth could come without anyone missing her at school.”

“What if we're thinking about the wrong girl?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if this all started with
Taylor
? Remember I told you that when he was home over Christmas, he was talking about a girl. That she was special—he hadn't ever known anyone like her. Told me she looked like Dakota Fanning.”

“Kristine? Is that what you're thinking?”

“No, her roommate. Chastity. That's how they all met. I thought her name sounded familiar. She and Taylor party, they all get to know each other. Chastity introduces Taylor and Paul to Kristine. She and Elizabeth are close, right? Close enough to cover for each other. Kristine was willing to pretend she was dating Paul, for Elizabeth's sake. But then today, you said that she was impatient with her. When she was telling the story, right? What if she was upset because Elizabeth was screwing it up?”

“I don't get it.”

“Elizabeth screwed up by actually falling for Paul. That wasn't supposed to happen. She was supposed to be easy to manipulate because she was young and—sorry—Paul was gullible. No wonder Kristine put the two of them together.”

“I'm way lost, Shay.”

Shay grabbed a clean piece of paper off the pad. “Okay, let's look at this another way. Think about Nora. She has coffee with one guy from the rig, tells him which guys are complaining to Roland in the break room, and he gives her an envelope full of cash. What do you think they would pay to find out about something potentially way more serious? Guys with the brains and the determination to make
real
trouble for them?”

“So you're saying... Kristine was doing the same thing? Selling information she got from men she dated?”

“Worse than that. What if she's not the only one? What if she and Chastity specifically targeted guys they thought they could get information from?”

Colleen was silent for a moment. “You're saying these girls have a whole scam going where they spy on workers and sell information for money.” She thought about it for a moment, the pieces falling into place. “Hunter-Cole has a problem—they've got safety issues that are getting out of hand, and these leases are coming under challenge. They stand to lose their whole stake on the reservation. The next council meeting is coming up. They know they've got potential troublemakers on the inside, guys making noise about reporting them, and they're trying to control it the old-fashioned way. Like with Roland. He makes a complaint, next thing he knows, he's demoted. But they know it's a ticking bomb. The way they handled it was the stupidest thing they could have done, because they've taught the workers not to come to management with their complaints. Which means they'll collect data and take it not to their supervisors, where it can be contained—”

“But to people that Hunter-Cole
can't
control. Just like Scott said. Their biggest fear is that someone gets the media involved, calls in CNN or even the Bismarck news stations, they wouldn't be able to resist a story like that.”

“But they know it's only a matter of time before someone comes along whose conscience is bigger than his fear of losing his job. Or even just someone who doesn't need the money that bad.”

The women stared at each other.

“Taylor didn't blow off his friend to go fishing that day because he didn't want to get in trouble,” Shay said slowly. “He did it because he didn't want to get his
friend
in trouble. So he took Paul. Because he knew Paul would land on his feet if he lost his job.”